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The Divine Comedy

The divine comedy is an epic poem written b Dante Alghieri between 1306 and 1321. In three sections Dante takes you through Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradiso (Paradise or Heaven). Each section has 33 parts that include mythological and historical personages.

Dante starts in the Forest of Error when he is just 35 years old. The Forrest of Error symbolized his sin and the sin of the world. He tries to get through the light on the top of the hill which represents Christ but a leopard, lion, and a she wolf bock his way. So Dante, and his partner deicide to take the alternate route through hell.

After they pass into hell he goes through the nine circles. The first circle is for well meaning heathens that couldn’t pass on to heaven or purgatory because they died before Christ brought redemption. The second circle through the sixth circle was for those who could not control their worldly desires. The seventh circle was reserved for those who committed violence against God, others, and themselves. The eighth circle was for deceivers and hypocrites, and the ninth circle was for the evilest of these.

Next he arrived in purgatory. Here people must purge themselves of sin to pass on to heaven. Dante is told that he must wash away the P’s (sin) while in purgatory. After he is purified he is able to pass into heaven.

Heaven is the holy and perfect place, it is a place of happiness. Although everyone experiences the fullness of Gods’ love ones placement depends on the level of goodness achieved in ones life time. The lowest level is the Moon followed by: Mercury; Venus; the Sun; Mars; Jupiter; Saturn; the Stars; and the Primum Mobile. The highest level is the Empyrean preserved for saints, angels, the Virgin Mary, and God Himself. Dante realizes that the grace of God is the only way into heaven. When he is accepted into heaven he could no longer remember the terrible things that he saw.

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...come with rewards and punishments, Dante Alighieri’s epic poem, the DivineComedy, gives an insight to the culmination of medieval thinking developed by the Church.
Since Dante’s date of birth is unknown, it is theorized that he was born around 1265. He was born in Florence at the early stages of the Renaissance, and he is considered a forerunner of it because of the way he created the Italian language. Dante combined Tuscany, a regional dialect, with Latin and other dialects to make it more suitable for its expression. This makes Dante one of the first to break from the traditional way of publishing in Latin (Dante Online). The DivineComedy gathers the Summa Theologica and Thomostic philosophy, both from St. Thomas Aquinas. Summarizing, Thomism says that truth is true wherever it is found, and Summa Theologica is a manual that serves as an explanation of theology and the main teachings of the Catholic Church (Knight). The DivineComedy was originally called Commedia; Giovanni Bocaccio added the word Divina later on. It is mathematically and numerically arranged in patters throughout the entire work, specifically in threes and nines. The poem is recognized by Dante’s personification of the characters he encounters, critics to Florentine and Italian politics and a large poetic imagination. Although there are no original manuscripts from Dante himself, there are about 800 copies of it...

...﻿Title:
The DivineComedy
Author:
Dante Alighieri
Type of Work:
Poem
Time and Place Written:
Italy; Dante wrote the DivineComedy from 1308 to 1320, completing the work the year before he died.
Setting:
Place
Inferno – Hell; The Valley of Evil
Purgatorio – Pugratory; The Mountain with Seven Cornices
Paradiso – Paradise; Dante’s imaginative conception of Heaven
Time:
The evening of Good Friday through the morning of Easter Sunday in the year 1300
Characters:
Dante - The author and protagonist of The DivineComedy
Virgil – Dante’s guide through the depths of Hell
Beatrice – The woman he admired when she was still living
St. Bernard – The saint who lead Dante to the Beatific Vision of God
Summary:
So begins the Inferno. Dante realizes he has wandered from the "True Way" in mid-life, and finds himself in the Valley of Evil. He is rescued by the spirit of Virgil (author of the Aeneid), who tells him he has been sent to guide him out of Hell because of prayers by Beatrice, the woman whom Dante admired all his life. To leave Hell, they must go through all nine circles of Hell, the deeper the circle, the more grave the sin and its appropriate punishment. Perhaps the worst punishment is that no one helps or cares for another in Hell. By going through Hell, Dante - and the reader - learn to recognize and detest man's sinful nature and the power of evil, and the need to guard against it....

...﻿Comparing the Spatial Images and Multiple Perspectives in
Paradise Lost and the DivineComedy
In Paradise Lost, John Milton reinterpreted the first three chapter of Genesis, describing the rebellion of Satan, the creation of humankind and the downfall of the human ancestor whose descendants await for the salvation of God’ son. The theme of the poem was made clear in Book I, “I may assert eternal providence,/And justify the ways of God to men.” (I.25-6). Though the entire poem is filled with religious significances and abstract theological perspectives, Milton was still able to build a spacious setting, creating his divine tragedy from Hell, Chaos, Paradise to Heaven. Milton’s copious description of landscape and space structure made me really interested in the structure of setting in his epic poem.
In the following, discussions will be regarding Milton’s cosmography that includes the composition of Hell, the relationship of Satan, fallen Angels and Hell, the symbolical meaning of the Pandemonium structure of Paradise and Adam and Eve’s relationship with it. There are studies discussing the architectural structure as a physical or just an analogical one and analyzing the different concepts of “space” and “place” in the poem and how they were used. Some focus on the spatial symbolical meaning of the divine field against Chaos or order against disorder. These studies only looked at Milton’s spatial view from a...

...truly comprehend Dante's DivineComedy, although complete comprehension is not necessary to enjoy this literary masterpiece, there are several skills one might need to acquire. For instance, one helpful piece of knowledge would be the ability to fluently speak Italian, since the many translations differ being able to have read Dante's actual written words and understand them would make reading the DivineComedy a bit more personal and therefore easier to understand. To catch and understand the plethora of references and allusions made by Dante it would aid any reader with their findings to be accompanying their reading of the DivineComedy with a reading of Dante's autobiography Vita Nuova. Vita Nuova or New Life would give the reader a comprehension of all the political references in addition to all of the political references throughout the DivineComedy. Whether it is Dante's un avenged ancestor Geri del Bello or the political leader Boniface the DivineComedy is made up of many aspects of Dante's life thus making it difficult for any scholar to pinpoint the true motive behind the writings of the DivineComedy.
However, if one was seeking more then just a ruff understanding of this piece, perhaps the reader is seeking the true reasoning behind the madness that is his unforgettable journey through the...

...The Meaning of Love
through the works of
Dante Alighieri
Tevon Strand-Brown
“O all ye whose intellects are sound,
Look now and see the meaning that is hidden
Beneath the veil that covers my strange verses:”
(Inferno 9:61)
Dante Alighieri is indisputably the most famous Italian poet in history. His seminal
work, The DivineComedy still inspires 700 years after its writing, and has not yet yielded
all of its secrets, though it is one of the most widely studied works ever to be written. The
name “Dante” and that of The DivineComedy are known the world over, but what of the
man Dante? What of the allegory beneath his verses? The history of the Divine Poet, his
life, his love and the mysteries of his great achievements are known to relatively few, compared to the number of people who have read the Comedy. My purpose here to open those
doors to you, to give a taste of the lessons and mysteries of Dante’s work, to give a glimpse
of a man, famous in his time and forevermore, and to recount the greatest tale of Love ever
told. His definition of love may be the most potent and intricate definition ever described,
told through four separate levels of allegory, culminating in the rise of the universal goal of
Love itself.
The Man
“In that book which is my memory,
On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you,
Appear the words, ‘Here...

...
Dante’s “The DivineComedy” is a trilogy of poems describing three realms of the afterlife. Each of the three books in “The DivineComedy” symbolize an afterlife station, “Inferno” representing hell, “Purgatorio” representing purgatory and “Parasido” representing paradise. The story is told in the first person, and is originally written in Italian, the language of the masses. This was unusual as most literary works of the time were written in Latin, a language not easily read by the common person. “The DivineComedy” is not a comedy. In this case, the word “comedy” implies it as a story with a prosperous ending after a difficult beginning. In Dante’s trilogy we learn of a man’s trip through the depths of hell, through redeeming purgatory and finally to paradise and reunion with God.
Dante’s first book in the trilogy “Inferno” is a story of a man’s journey through hell. The traveler, Dante, must embark on this ominous journey for the sake of his own soul. He has lost his way in life by straying from the path of righteousness. Dante is fortunate that he has a guide to lead him by encouragement, knowledge and care. The guide is Virgil, a great Roman poet Dante recognizes from mortal life and a person whom he admires. Dante is fearful, he doesn’t think he will survive a trip through hell but knows that he must do this in order to get back on the...

...tunnel;
. . .
Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars.
These concluding words of Inferno describe Dante and Virgil’s climb out of the underworld and back to the surface of the Earth (XXXIV.134–140). Dante the poet fancies that when Lucifer was flung down from Heaven, he struck the Earth in a place exactly opposite Jerusalem in the Southern Hemisphere and penetrated the center of the planet; the cavity left by his fall is Hell. As Dante and Virgil climb out of Hell on the other side of the world, they climb up through a cavity that was once full of earth; the earth was displaced by Lucifer’s fall and thrust up to the surface, where it formed an island. This island is Purgatory, which Dante tours in the next part of The DivineComedy, Purgatorio, as he continues his trek toward salvation.
These lines are chiefly important because of how they end: Dante, fresh from his nightmarish visit to Hell, gazes up at Heaven’s stars. This image symbolizes the idea that Dante has begun his slow climb out of sin and confusion and has taken a step toward Beatrice and God, ending this very dark poem on a note of brilliant optimism. It is greatly significant that both Purgatorio and Paradiso end with the same word as Inferno: stele, or the stars. It is clear not only that Dante aspires to Heaven but also that his poem aspires to a place among the epics.
...

...Full Circle  from Sin to Salvation
Great works of literature have been written throughout history. However, The DivineComedy and Paradise Lost have the inept ability to stir the soul and cause a person to examine and re-examine their life. The brilliant descriptions, use of imagery, metaphor and simile give a person a vivid picture of the creation of man and the possibilities for life in the hereafter. This is done, as a person is able to see, full circle, from the beginning of time to the end of time, the consequences of turning away from God. The ability to see a life full circle is apparent through the examination of both of these poems. Although written many years ago, the morals and principles that they convey ring very true for people in this century as well as times yet to come.
The DivineComedy, written in the 14th century by Dante Alighieri, is a heroic epic. Throughout Dante's literary work, he outlines his scientific understandings of the world, his political views and provides the reader with a moral compass and spiritual map of which to follow. This poem is written in three parts, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradisio, each of which is broken down into individual cantos. Inferno includes 34 cantos, whereas Purgatrio and Paradiso each contain 33 cantos, however, the first canto of Inferno is really an introduction to the poem.
The primary characters in Dante's poem include himself, who is...